The 12th Annual Easyriders V-Twin Expo in Cincinnati, a trade show devoted to everything American V-Twin is setup for February 4-6, 2012. The 2012 Advanstar Dealer Expo in Indianapolis, another trade show encompassing all the powersport industry will open its doors a few days later February 17-19, 2012. But in 2012, in the same Indianapolis location, Advanstar will host the American V-Twin Dealer Show, directly in competition with the Cincinnati V-Twin Expo originally created to offer exibitors a specific place devoted only to American V-Twin manufacturers and dealers, without deperdition of contacts with visitors only interested by metric powersports. Advanstar just announced that the American V-Twin Dealer Show will be a standalone event co-located within the Dealer Expo. Both shows will be held simultaneously in the Indiana Convention Center, giving dealers a ‘one-stop’ shopping and educational experience while maintaining the distinction of the American V-Twin market.”

Well, all industry professionals are talking about this announcement because it raises a lot of questions. Can both American V-Twin trade shows can be profitable and live almost side by side 10 days apart. Because of the economy, it is a fact that a lot of V-Twin manufacturers, distributors and dealers, have scaled down their traveling expenses and no more participate to any of these 2 events. Many had to choose between attending one or the other trade show. Very few can or want to attend both, even if their product lines spread on the 2 markets, American and Metric. So, the decision making process is getting a little bit more difficult today with 2 American V-Twin trade shows competing with each other, one in Indianapolis offering some potential to cross over to a new clientele of metric powersports dealers who may be interested in American V-Twin, and also if you are an after-market manufacturer extending your line to Metric resellers and users.

No doubt that choice will also be made after comparing and taking in account the cost of exhibitor space in the 2 American V-Twin trade shows. Rental fees for the Cincinnati V-Twin Expo trade show are known, not those of the Indianapolis American V-Twin Dealer Show. Where is the best value? I would say in both, but only if you have the means to participate to both. Of course Advanstar, the Indianapolis show organizer argues that dealers spanning the V-Twin and metric markets will be able to pass easily between the American V-Twin Dealer Show and Dealer Expo.

Veteran V-Twin industry executive Grady Pfeiffer (CEO of GH Marketing, a specialty firm that creates sales and marketing programs for motorcycle aftermarket manufacturers) has signed on as a key partner and brand ambassador for the Indianapolis American V-Twin Dealer show. Additional partners include Biker’s Choice, the V-Twin division of Tucker Rocky Distributing, Custom Chrome returning to Indy after a multi-year absence and National Powersport Auctions.

“Biker’s Choice is thrilled to partner with Advanstar as an anchor tenant in the inaugural American V-Twin Dealer Show. We believe this show will provide an incredible value to the Harley/American V-Twin community with an extraordinary lineup of tailored events and activities,” said Jay Goldstein, CFO of Tucker Rocky/Biker’s Choice. Holger Mohr, president and CEO of Custom Chrome Inc. says “By choosing to align Custom Chrome with the American V-Twin Dealer Show, I am confident we can not only achieve this goal but also reach a broader buying audience.” Attendee registration for both Indianapolis shows opens Tuesday, July 19, at Indianapolis Dealers Expo.

20 Responses to “V-Twin Trade Show War Boiling For 2012”

Once again Advanstar is trying to compete with the V-Twin Expo. How many times will they relaunch this show before just hanging it up? The V-Twin Expo in Cincy was created for the v-twin market BY the v-twin market, not by greedy show promoters. The Expo in Cincy is the real deal. Indy is great for ATV’s and PWC”s, not American v-twin focused businesses.

The Cincy show isn’t necessarily bad, but there aren’t real buyers there actually buying. At Indy, you do real business, close real sales. At Cincy, it’s basically like an infomercial – people are there to check out some stuff, not to actively buy.

One of the problems with the V-Twin expo is that it’s so nepotistic… same few manufacturers winning the same awards again and again, the press and magazines that attend the show take pics with the big name manufacturers and mostly ignore everything else.

If you do ONLY V-Twin and none of your parts work on other bikes, Cincy is probably the better show right now. But if you have any crossover at all, Indy is where it’s at. Indy draws people from every continent in the world, and the show is 10 times the size of the V-Twin expo. And not just PWC and ATV – for street bikes, metric cruisers, scooters, anything off-road, etc.

Gonna step on toes here. V Twin is a very one sided show as others know. In my opinion as long as Dave Nichols has his fingers in the pie, it will always be soured. Piasano and Easyriders promote the ones they want with preferred parking, free floor space, awards, etc….and keep the others suppressed. Same in other industries, too.

Displayed there years ago, but just walk the floor periodically now. May go there this year, but I doubt it. Indy will be the death of Cinci V-Twin….greed and favoritism.

For those in Paisano’s tight-niched circle, the V-Twin Expo is fine. Those wanting more of an independent, global platform maybe its time to start considering other alternatives including the Advanstar show.

Quite frankly both of these shows are an incredibly expensive and poor tool to reach the dealer network. Without OEM involvement, motorcycle releases etc these shows have continued to show dwindling attendance and extremely poor ROI. These long ago ceased to be major buying shows as they were in the 90’s and early 2000’s. I think the larger issue is that both Advanstar and Paisano forgot that vendors were their first customer and then the attendees. Vendors in general have been treated like commodities with the only exception being if you have something they want. One has to only look at the invasion of the Chinese vendors and how they were able to almost instantaneously get a presence on the main floor where other companies played the points game for 5, 10 and sometime 15 years to reach the main floor. The best of shows globally have a lead in calendar that first reserves one or two days just for media, then one or two days just for dealer-vendor meetings or OEM dealer meetings then opens the doors to the general public to view these large exhibits we invest in, this is done in a multitude of industries. The public comes to see the new bikes first then seeks out the rest of the pieces that make their riding world complete like apparel and accessories. Advanstar and Paisano are milking a very old cow and quite frankly offer nothing new, visionary or innovative. There is a group of major players discussing a new show that would include the OEM’s and I hope this will come to fruition as it is time the The U.S. dealers and vendors can once again garner world attention with new model releases and market leading technologies being announced at our largest trade shows, we deserve no less and definitely more than companies like Advanstar and Paisano are currently providing.

What a freakin’ joke! This is the 5th time that Advanstar will piss off the the V-Twin market and everyone else for that matter and what a set of balls on Grady. He spent most of his career talking shit about Advanstar regarding their attempts and failures in this segment especially when they tried to launch Big Twin West in Las Vegas. Guess the well ran dry for him in the V-Twin market and he had to find a sugar daddy. BTW, I thought Grady was buddies with Betlach and the gang over there? Anyway there should be one show for power sports but too many egos between V-Twin Expo and Advanstar to make it work right. I gave up on both this year, joined SEMA and going to test the power sports waters over there. They actually treat me with respect and the price is right! Nothing like doing business with a member driven organization versus a profit ego driven company.

Although it certainly is true that Cinci does indeed promote and give awards to a select few that they “easyrider” prefer. It is still the best show for the V Twin market. And as I recall the very reason Cinci gained so much in popularity is because of how the promotor at Indy treated the vendors. Lets just remember how things over there went. Indy uses a point system to give both space. Here is an example
If you were in the V Twin section because you sell V Twin products but your both was smaller than someone that had a larger both but they wanted in that V Twin section even though they did not sell V Twin products. The promotor would move you out of the V Twin section to move in the NON-V TWIN vendor. Why because they had more points than the real V Twin vendor. So what happens is you get a V Twin section with non V Twin vendor’s and the real V Twin vendors would not be in the V Twin section so you would not be seen by your target market. That happened to many vendors and most of them did both the V-Twin expo in Cinci and the powersports show in Indy. Now most of those vendors only do the Cinci show and don’t do the Indy show. So the bottom line is if you are looking for V Twin products go to Cinci. If you are in the business of selling Japanese bikes,mopeds,lawnmowers or snowmobiles go to Indy. And they other thing I remember most about the Indy show is they would let the big vendors with their semi trucks plug up what little loading area they had while those big vendors tore down their boths. The trucks should have been moved out of the way so that vendors that did have their boths packed up and ready to move could get out but again the promotor cater’s to the big vendor’s not the smaller vendor’s. So it seems funny to me to hear some of you guys say that Cinci cater’s to the big guys when in fact they both do. But Cinci is much more vendor friendly. And Cinci is the ONLY real V Twin show.

As an attendee at the past 3 V-Twin shows in Cinci, I can say that attendance has been steadily declining each year. For those of you that were there last year, you know what I’m saying. Where there were booths in 2010, there were tables and chairs in 2011. Where there were full booth rentals in 2010, there were empty spaces. Seems to me this is a great idea. At least with this next show, everyone will be represented..whether V- Twin or metric. I welcome the change…..Its about time.

It is interesting to see where both trade shows will be heading. The Cinci V-Twin show started because the V-Twin venders at Indy wanted their own area or identity. A fair request as we did not want to be mixed up with other foofoo venders. The call was finally answered but it was too little too late. I have done both shows and like them both. If I were to include SEMA, I feel I’d be getting far better exposure as SEMA draws people from all over the world for even better contactability and for less money.
A show has to have a good feel to it and I find the Cinci show does that well for the V-Twin community in general.
I drive my rig to Cinci from Calif with 6 other venders displays and products on board. While it is a hassle to for me to facilitate all of them (pick up, delivery, loading/unloading at Cinci, driving in nasty snow storms), 4 of them would not be displaying at Cinci. I’m always hoping to make a better experience for both the venders and dealers so we can all experience a better show from it.
There is no doubt that trade shows costs keep rising and the thing of concern to venders is the rising costs with less attendance which equates to more money being spent for less contacts.
While show attendance used to expand years ago, venders were hit with price increases as the promoters justified the increase because of the attendance increases. However while the attendance has been declining, venders are never given a price reduction, in fact the opposite is true with further increases. On the other hand I’m sure the promoters are hit with price increases from the venue owners who show no mercy.
We can only hope for a stronger V-Twin show for both venders and attendees.

Declining attendance at any show is the norm today- if you think it applies to just one show, look around. Everywhere from Sturgis to trade shows, the WHOLE industry is down.

The bottom line is this: The V-Twin Expo is part of OUR industry. Easyriders has skin in the game. Advanstar is a show promoter first and only. If their latest re-launch with Grady fails- they lose nothing and walk away. The V-Twin Expo is part of our industry. They will move mountains to help exhibitors and dealers prevail because this industry is their livelihood like it is for all of us.

LET’S THROW STURGIS INTO THIS MIX
There’s no question it’s the MECA for the industry faithful (retail crowd/bill-payers) and even in a down economy a few hundred thousand still spend their hard-earned dough to get there, along with a few thousand dealers from around the world I’d have to speculate. We should also mention Sturgis has the culmination of the only World-Wide bike Championship in the AMD show as a good draw and showcase. Granted the stage isn’t the same as the 2 indoor shows and square footage sho’ ain’t cheap but it’s a great chance to show your wares to the world, for dealers to see how the products work first-hand & how the retail public receives them, and it’s not a bad place to “network” at night either! CRAP, we’re leaving in 15 days…I gotta get outta here and get busy! See you there!

We have been displaying in Cinci from the beginning days of Renegade, (2004.) Jim Betlack and Paisano do a good job for the V-twin industry at a time that has showed to be one of the most challenging economic times in History.
Having come from outside the “V-Twin Industry”, We needed this targeted show to show our wheels to the very group of dealers we target. We have developed relationships with customer partners every year we have attended.
I believe it is our responsibility to support the Cinci show as, now more than ever we need to be united in our targeted “V-Twin” efforts.

I challenge exhibitors to look within to see if each of us are doing everything “WE” can, to bring exciting innovative products to OUR show. Are we bringing new displays of interest?
Are WE making sure our dealers are aware of our participation?
What are we doing to change the trend of lower attendance.

For many years we exhibited at the Indy show then missed a year. This put us displaying in a closet the next year because of their point system. Paisano & Easyrider went out on a limb to create a show just for our market because Advanstar could have cared less. Advanstar had more venders than places to put them. Now attendance is down in every show as dealers struggle to pay their rent. But as we always do business will come back sooner or later. When it does Advanstar will do the same crap they did to us before. I say support the people who support you. When reading some of the comments even though people do not use their own names it is easy to figure out who they are. Complaining about Paisano/Easyrider being partial to Gerbils and other friends is funny to me. I have never found that to be true. Jim works his butt off to take care of everyone. Advanstar for me is a no go.

I have been a vendor at both, the only thing about the v-twin show is that the buyers are HD buyers, God forbid you are trying to sell metric v-twin accessories, the buyers there (Cincy) don’t consider them part of their industry even though promoters of the show do appear to.
The auction at Indy is nothing but a distraction for both the vendors and the buyers,that was a joke!
It’s definitely time for these two groups to combine but they are so busy pi$$in on each other, I don’t see it ever happening. So which of these shows actually cares about this industry??? I think neither, Having two shows is in nobody’s best interest.
It’s too bad the whole bunch can’t get together and act like grown-ups and make one really big kick-a$$ show of shows for the world to enjoy. I can’t believe this couldn’t work best for ALL involved.